Mljet, Croatia
We arrived in Mljet by ferry. This seems the only way to arrive in Mljet other than by yacht. If you were wondering, no, a recent college grad and a first year teacher did not embark on a European yachting excursion. The ferry smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes. Everything on that continent smelled of stale cigarettes. I fell in and out of a warm, damp, crowded sleep insistently interrupted by the onslaught of waves and loud children complaining in no less than eight languages. Teaching elementary music this last year taught me to love and appreciate the children I work with, and fear the ones I encounter anywhere else.
Eventually we docked, wrestled for our backpacks, and exited the boat. The island greeted us with a cool breeze, the scent of salt water, and a multitude of old Croatian men most endearingly saying, “Taxi, please?”
We were not here for a taxi. Nick, who can drive stick, felt determined to rent a tiny convertible. I felt grateful as Mljet would be near impossible without a car. The roads are perilous for pedestrians and bicyclists alike with cars zooming around winding roads prone to rockslides.
We settled on a white Fiat — a closed roof, crank-down windows, and breaks that screeched themselves to life. We did not ask about its airbags. Cultured in the ways of the manual car, Nick immediately operated the Fiat as if he had grown up with one. Raised in Plymouth, Minnesota, I’m quite sure he did not. Did the US even have Fiats in the ‘90’s? He expertly traversed winding cliffs, dodging drivers who interpreted medians as suggestions, turning 145 degrees with ease, until we descended upon our bay of Prožurska Luka.
A string of expletives flew from our cranked-down windows — this was the most beautiful place we had ever had the privilege, even briefly, to call home.
Pine trees and cacti weaved together and apart revealing beige tones of Limestone as we descended the jagged hillside. Verdant green desert life shimmered in the unforgiving summer sun, occasionally interrupted by the pink and orange flowers that fluttered gracefully, but stood firmly, no doubt rooted deep, deep below the rocks, holding on tightly to an ancient trace of soil. The flora made way for a black tar parking lot, filled with little old stick-shifts like ours. I imagine at night, when their drivers are asleep in their beds down the road, the cars share their stories and laugh at the tourists’ caked-on sunscreen and fear of bees.
Fiddling with windows and locks we exited the vehicle, dirty shoes on hot pavement. We hoisted our backpacks from the trunk and assembled ourselves as we made our way down the path. We chose to follow the chipped, brown wooden sign with a whimsical carving of a fork and knife. Carefully we plotted down the stone path. Plumes of white dirt followed each footstep. Bees buzzed and birds chirped as we carried on, almost walking into the patios and porches of the locals’ homes so effortlessly decorating the walking path. Such a traveler’s perspective: to think the houses decorated the path. The path belonged to those people, meticulously including their doorways and porch fronts and slanting stone staircases.
The restaurant appeared at the bottom, charmingly perched on the stone ledge, separating land from sea. No true beach. Sand did not live here. Only stone and cement topped with tiny tables and potted plants all inviting us to swim.
After ten minutes of sitting and sipping coffee it became clear our waiter was well acquainted with this invitation of the sea. He would leave our cappuccinos, and return without a shirt. Leave the food, return in a speedo. At one point, glowing with saltwater and sunshine, he brought us some sort of burning paper and unpleasant incense to keep the thirsty wasps at bay. It worked momentarily.
An hour passed, our hunger tamed. With shirts tied around waists and backpacks strapped tight we hiked up to our lodging. Our reservation was in an apartment complex overlooking the bay. Its white walls and stone balconies blended into the surroundings. Having knocked on the door of apartment C, we made brief eye contact and suddenly rushed to wrestle on our shirts over sunscreen and sweat. As per the comedic timing of the universe, we did not dress in time, and our host, Mica, greeted two headless Americans wriggling on sweaty shirts at her doorstep. Embarrassed, we said hello, and accepted her invitation to come in.
Mica had a royal charm about her. A flowing, cobalt blue sundress and an easy smile gave the look of a princess on her day off as she toured us around the small, elegant rooms. The bathroom featured the ubiquitous European shower, snug in the corner with a rounded glass door. The bedroom enchanted us with a dancing white curtain in the open window, and the scent of fresh sheets. We reached the balcony and our jaws opened as if unhinged by gravity.
The entire bay sparkled with light green and turquoise water as the urchins and anemones blended together in a dark, mysterious tapestry just below the surface of the shore. About a hundred yards off the bay was a strange and stoic hill with a rounded top, completely covered in plant-life, jutting straight out of the water in a perfect isosceles form. Sailboats and yachts circled the island like Saturn’s moons, each with its own sun-infused light blue galactic trail behind it. With hues of white and oak finishings each boat looked small on its own. Collectively though, they owned the island, commanding its gravity, guarding it with celestial prowess. Just beyond was the Adriatic Sea, with soft, pastel painted mountains fading into the midday horizon.
She told us of her Master’s degree in Humanities, and how, contrary to much American thought, she couldn’t find any well paying work. Now she spends time tending to beach side properties while her professional basketball-playing husband travels the continent. My intuition was right — modern royalty.
Every stay of ours had intricate details about the electricity. You can use the stove and the outlets, but not the washer and the stove, and not the outlets and the washer if you’re using a hairdryer, and maybe just turn off everything once in a while because we don’t have American power here, ok? Mica’s home was much of the same. After thorough instructions, she departed gracefully. We rushed through cold showers and got to washing our clothes. We’d spent the last two weeks sleeping in the hostiles of Berlin and Prague. Our shirts and socks still reeked of bunk beds and nightclubs.
The rest of the afternoon dripped into the evening: a trip to the grocery store a few miles up the road, several local clerks understandably exhausted of tourists, a traveler’s stir fry in our unfamiliar micro-kitchen, gin and tonics on the balcony, hoping the Croatian liquor we bought was actually gin. We darted about the small balcony when the wasps got aggressive, and trapped them in our glasses until the table was a graveyard of orange glassware, muddled limes, and floating yellow and black striped wasp carcasses. We read our books and took photographs of the sunset.
“Did you hear what Mica said about the pirates?” Nick asked me.
“Definitely not,” I replied. “When was this?”
“While you used the bathroom.”
My eyebrows raised. “You’re saying that if I had held my bladder a few minutes I could have gotten a Croatian pirate story?”
“Yeah, dude.”
“Well hurry up! What’d she say?” I felt giddy. Since moving to Oregon, the ocean has found many ways into my life, but pirate stories have yet to be one of them.
“The homes down here, what do you think of them?” His I know something that you don’t smirk appeared, quietly taunting me as he drew out what he knew I was dying to hear.
I groaned. “They’re beautiful, textured like the island, with bright colors here and there.”
“Do they look old?” he asked.
I looked around for a moment, no longer bothered by his questioning, but intrigued. “No. No they look modern. Not like American modern, but strangely angular and updated. Why?”
“’That’s because they’ve only been here for fifty years.”
I gasped. He nodded. “Please tell me why,” I said.
“Up until fifty years ago, everyone had to live in the hills. Their homes were small and hidden. At any time, pirates might wander up the shore searching for money and women.”
“Jesus, I get stressed when my wifi goes out. These people were hiding from sword wielding pirates.”
“Yeah man, she said there might be one home on top of the hill, and they’d ring the bell if they saw ships approaching. Can you imagine? Like, my phone tells me when to get up, to get to work, what the weather will be… all these people had was some guy in a tower who might ring a bell if pirates showed up.”
We laughed for a bit, but I couldn’t help trailing off in my mind. Finally, I asked him, “Do you wonder about your ancestors? I mean the ones who came to America to escape those kinds of things?”
“All the time,” he said. “How they gave up everything without a sliver of a guarantee that things would be fine.”
“No pictures of where they’d arrive, no idea what jobs were available. They couldn’t even speak English, and they didn’t care!”
He nodded in agreement. “Do you think they ever imagined that their descendants might come back, on their own terms?”
I paused. “Maybe, but only in their wildest dreams.”
By now the moon had seized the sky. Taking a cue from the surrounding darkness and the quiet night, we poured another round and made our way down to the shore again.
Through the stone paths, past the unlit porches and dim windows gently ajar in the night air, we wandered to the main beach, past the restaurant, by a patio of lively card players, past a couple sharing a bottle of wine under low light, and finally reached the dark edge of the bay. A rectangular dock of stone and concrete, abandoned by streetlights and unencumbered by homes, became our generous drink coaster, and our front row seat to the sea. With bare feet dangling over the water we laughed at schools of fish traveling by each other, thinking about the possibility of their wondrous watery lives. What did the bay look like from down there, illuminated only by filtered moonlight? Did they insult opposing fish tribes as they swam by? Or did they give compliments to those passing neighbors out of a need to peacefully share the warm, endless waters of their Great Blue Mother?
We discussed our fears of the Trump administration. Nick told me of his term in Hawaii studying education policy. I talked of my freshly finished first year of teaching in Kelso, Washington. As we spoke, our attention drifted upwards. We spoke with softness as our necks craned towards the stars.
The Milky Way was showing off for us. Strings of stardust connected its brightest features, revealing a planet here and there, with shooting stars falling on their own time. I’d never seen the night sky so bright. We continued our conversation in this trance. Current events faded from topic, easily replaced by the fears of graduating, the concerns of apartment shopping, and sincere questions of professional failure. We wondered if our parents would be proud of us, and our grandparent’s too. Just as before, we wondered if our ancestors, who risked everything to start a new life in the United States, ever dreamed that their kin would make it back across the ocean, life stuffed into backpacks, traveling for leisure rather than survival.
Somewhere in these talks I found myself, well, outside of myself. My discussion kept up with Nick on the shore, but my consciousness began to float. Slowly it dangled over the rooftops of Prožurska Luka, gazing at the moonlight and the humble beauty in its path. Fearlessly it floated farther, keeping company with the moon, looking down upon the sleeping Croatian countryside. Further still it floated with ease to join the stars, peering down on the Earth.
In that moment, I felt the company of my ancestors. My great grandfather, Domenic, who took a ship to Ellis Island by himself, returned to Italy for his wife, and came back again to work in the iron mines of Michigan. My great grandmother, Anne, who fed the homeless on her door step every evening of the Great Depression. Her husband, Tom, who hopped trains from La Crosse, Wisconsin to Los Angeles to play jazz piano in order to pay for Dental school. Each of my grandfathers, who fought in World War II, and their wives, whose love carried like a wildfire, its warmth and ferocity felt from a distance. I could feel them all — a cool, cosmic glow swimming around me, enveloped by love, acceptance, and a collective, tacit understanding. I could not see them, nor could I see myself. Just the Earth, and space, and stars. Floating without temperature, I felt perfectly still. Weightless in spirit, I felt comfort in belonging to the world.
At some point, unmeasured by either of us, my consciousness rejoined my body on the dock. Our conversation continued. I didn’t mention this moment to Nick until the next day. I’m not even sure I was aware of its significance after it happened. It felt so seamless, so natural. I’ve since asked myself: does that happen to people? Does our consciousness explore space without our consent? Can we be in the company of generations past before our time has come? I’ve come to the conclusion that none of these questions are worth dwelling on, that it was so real to me that it’s probability and purpose may remain unexplained — weightless and timeless as the moment itself.
Our words slowed and simmered until we were left staring at the stars. The glasses were empty. The bay had grown silent. Eventually, it was time to head home. We gathered our things and traversed the dark shores back to the apartment. My sleep is often accompanied by anxiety, but with all these thoughts of space and time and ancestry floating around us, I found no trouble in falling asleep. There was the sea. There were the stars. And quickly, I fell asleep there, in the space in between.
